LONDON: Teachers at a school in Lancashire in north west England, who walked out over the unruly behaviour of their pupils, have threatened one-hour strikes unless their headteacher helps them restore discipline.

Seventy of the 80 staff at Darwen Vale high school, in Darwen, Lancashire, did not turn up to take lessons on Thursday, saying students are out of control, pushing them, challenging them to fights, and threatening to film their lessons and post them online.

They claimed the headteacher, Hilary Torpey, and her senior colleagues were not consistent in the way they deal with bad behaviour and undermine staff by returning confiscated mobile phones to pupils.

Torpey, who started in November 2009, said she was disappointed that the teachers felt they needed to go on strike and that the vast majority of pupils behaved well.

She said: “We are in discussions about how we can best resolve this situation so that staff feel well supported.”

But Simon Jones, a local National Union of Teachers official who was on the picket line, said that while discussions between Torpey and her staff were proceeding, the matter was unlikely to be resolved until May at the earliest.

“We might have to hold one-hour stoppages before the end of the school day so that we carry on making progress,” he said.

Jones said at least 10 pupils should be excluded. “There should have been fairly automatic exclusions given the seriousness of some of the incidents,” he said.

“Children have been threatening to carry out physical assaults on teachers and making malicious allegations. We want management to accept that there is a problem and to propose some solutions.

“We want a behaviour policy in place so that if a child misbehaves, there are a series of sanctions that are followed through.” He said that of the 1,150 pupils, about a tenth were causing concern by smoking and skipping lessons and about 60 were making physical or verbal threats.

Nadeem Siddiqui, who has taught history at the school for 10 years, said there had been no consistent approach over the banning of mobile phones.

“This has led to more pupils getting out their phones in lessons,” he said. “Poor behaviour has escalated because of management’s refusal to acknowledge that there is a problem.”

Emma Shaw-Mackay, who has a 12-year-old son at the school, said she supported the walk-out. “The teachers’ hands are clearly tied when it comes to enforcing discipline. Students have been filming teachers in class and then putting it up on Facebook, at YouTube, which is unacceptable.”—Dawn/ Guardian News Service